Hard times

How are high street game stores and small traders surviving hard times? I recently spent a pleasant half an hour (and a few quid) in a local store and I was the only customer in the shop for over half an hour.

The end the Friendly Local Game Store?

Are our Friendly Local Game Stores coming to an end? Many already have over the last few decades, from takeovers by Games Workshop to the advent of internet shopping. But it is possible that for many small, often family-run stores a new existential threat could be the final straw.

Support your Friendly Local Game Store

I've spoken before about supporting our hobby by buying online but now that the shops are open, I think it's also important to support your local game store in person. If you are lucky enough to have an independent games shop near you, look after it! They are a dying breed and need your support.

I'd love to hear from you if you have a favourite local game store that deserves a shout-out. Please leave your recommendations in the comments below or on my channel Miniature Adventures. 

Seaside Gaming Loot

My two week summer holiday is rapidly nearing its end but while the weather stays nice we decided to get out and enjoy the sun. I suggested a drive along the North Kent coast with a stop at Rochester for some shopping before heading to the beach... The wife's eyes lit up but she should have known I had a cunning plan!

Rochester has several good second hand bookshops as well as a good game shop well worth a visit. Not a bad haul for a few hours shopping and it gave me plenty to read while we sat on the beach in the sun. 

Soldiers of Rye

While away on holiday I have tried to take the odd opportunity for some hobby related shopping in some small but perfectly formed independent shops. One of the nicest was a very small but exquisite model shop in the East Sussex town of Rye. Soldiers of Rye deals in hand painted military figures, toy soldiers, die-casting aircraft, military books, medals and prints and is run by the very knowledgeable Chris Viner.

I came across this shop while exploring this Cinque Port town on the edge of Romney Marsh just a few miles down the coast from Hastings. The shop itself is probably no more than ten foot square but every wall is filled with glass cases of painted figures, books, medals and prints. I treated myself to an original Tank Corps cap badge and spent a good while chatting to the proprietor about figure collecting and wargaming. A very nice chap and a wonderful little shop that is well worth a visit if you are in the area. 

Books, FLGS, the Millennium Falcon & HMS Victory

The last weekend of the school summer vacation and we were hunting around for something to do. Normally we would go to a big event like Military Odyssey but we decided to give it a miss this year as we have done this event so many times even I was getting a little tired of it. So instead we decided to visit Rochester in Kent for a little retail therapy. The high street has several really good bookshops with extensive military history sections. Needless to say I treated myself to a few second-hand books!

Rochester is also graced with an excellent and very well stocked games shop. I treated myself to some X-Wing models and picked up some paint and varnish so by the end of the day I was a very happy chappie. 

We rounded the day off with a visit to the Guildhall Museum in Rochester. They have a very interesting exhibition on the Prison Hulks of the Medway and other nautical items, including an amazing model of the HMS Victory.

The Holiday Continues - Rochester

I'm a week into my two week vacation and I'm utterly knackered. Last week I posted a few pictured from our short break in Herne Bay but that was just the opening salvo of my holiday. For the rest of my two weeks off we are going out on day trips but despite being based from home I've not had any time (or spare energy) to fit in any painting or gaming so far. Fortunately there is a Rejects game scheduled for next week and I'm looking forward to that as at the moment it looks like this will be my only chance to play during my break. 

Immediately after returning from our short break it was mine and my wife's wedding Anniversary. We decided to spend some of it in Rochester doing a little book shopping and taking it a little easier after the previous few hectic days. The only problem is we clearly have forgotten how to take it easy because as well as a lot of shopping I also took my daughter into Rochester Castle and climbed the keep with her. It's been a few years since I last did this, and I'm a few stone heavier than then, but I swear they must have added a few floors because it nearly killed me climbing to the top! 

Games and Models of Rochester is a great little shop absolutely packed with stock. Well worth a visit if you are in town. I popped in and picked up a few items and had a nice chat with the owner about the state  of the hobby, how the shop was doing since it opened and about the fate of ModelZone and how it would impact the hobby. 

I took my youngest daughter up the Keep of Rochester Castle. Here in 1215 rebel Barons resisted King John and despite major damage during the siege the Keep remains the tallest in England. Inside the Keep is this model showing how the castle would have looked in its heyday. 

The keep stands 113 feet high and climbing it isn't for the faint of heart, but if you make it to the top the view of Rochester Cathedral and the town is excellent.

Also visible from the castle battlements is the former Russian Hunter Killer class sub "Black Widow". Built in 1967 it saw service until 1994 and was armed with 22 Torpedo's including 2 with low yield nuclear warheads. The current owners hope to reopen it as a museum (see their website here).

I came home with a couple books and some sore feet but overall it was a nice day and a welcome change of pace before visiting the British Museum the following day (pictures of that trip tomorrow). 

Recommend Book Shop

I've got to spread a little kudos about this great little bookshop in Tunbridge Wells. It's an eclectic mix, part games, part gifts, part second hand book store and with an old fashioned sweetshop inside as well. There are several aisles of bookshelves covering a wide range of subjects but significantly they also have a rather large section (five large book cases containing perhaps about 75 feet of shelving in total) dedicated to military and historical books, many at very reasonable prices and most in excellent condition. I never come away empty handed when I stop here and if you pass through Tonbridge Wells it is well worth a visit. 

Pantiles Books Crafts & Games has a wide range of low price, second hand, military books.

My latest acquisition from here was a pictorial review of Panzers in the Desert by Bruce Quarrie. This is a slim volume (just 94 pages) but is full of rare Black and White photo`s of German AFV`s in North Africa, collected from the Bundesarchive. Many of the photo's were taken by German war correspondents serving with Rommel's famous Afrika Korps but there are also examples taken by soldiers themselves. Some of the pictures are clearly 'reconstructed' scenes but many appear to be actual scenes and of course the equipment and men featured are genuine.


The book includes a brief history of the units that made up the Afirika Korps and the photo's show troops both 'in action' & at rest and include images of armour, artillery, soft skin vehicles & infantry. The photo's therefore provide a unique insight into this theatre of the war. I bought this book primarily as a visual archive and reference work and now that I have had a good look through it I am sure it will be very useful indeed for my North Africa Project.

Let the Retail Therapy Commence

Although I'm a keen Internet shopper there really is no replacement for hands-on retail therapy. And for gamers like me that usually means visiting a local wargames show or convention. There are a handful of game shops within reach of my home but for the sheer variety of products available you can't beat a convention. My 'show season' (for want of a better phrase) starts this Sunday with Cavalier at Tonbridge in Kent.

I have only been going to this show for a couple of years (since I joined Posties Rejects) but it has become a firm favourite and a regular feature of my gaming calender. It's nice and early in the year and it feels like the herald of spring after a long bleak winter without any other shows (the last one I went to was SELWG, waaaaay back in October). My trigger finger is definitely starting to get twitchy and I have some cash burning a hole in my pocket that absolutely must be spent!

Here are a collection of my pictures from the 2011 and 2012 shows to whet your appetite for this great little event. 

Friday Rant - Poor Customer Service

Like many gamers I purchase a lot of the paints, accessories and miniatures I want online. I personally feel that 'my' hobby has benefited from the growth of Internet shopping because I can search and find products that I might never have found at a show or in a FLGS. Maybe the product I want is very rare, or maybe its only available outside the UK. No matter where it is, how rare or obscure it might be, I can find it with the right browser search terms and a little patience. But it seems to me that some online retailers still have a lot to learn about customer service.

I should make it clear that I still think there is an important place in the high street for real game shops and that I still visit them and buy from traders at shows. Indeed I made a quick estimate of my hobby spending last year and three quarters of it was conducted face to face with traders rather than across the World Wide Web. The great benefit of direct purchases like this is the 'relationship' you have with the trader. I'm not suggesting they are my personal buddies or that we are on first name terms, but dealing with a human being rather than a web page is obviously a more interactive experience. I can get a feeling for what sort of business they run, how they deal with customers and whether they are 'my sort of people' (i.e. gamers themselves). Its hard to achieve that online, although it has to be said that many of the companies I buy from via the Internet I have previously bought from at shows and shops.

However sometimes I do deviate from online traders that I know personally. Sometimes the service and experience is excellent but recently I seem to have encountered online retailers that fall far below my expectations for good customer service. And when I talk about customer service I'm largely talking about good communication skills.

For me communication is everything because its part of building the 'relationship' between customer and supplier that the Internet doesn't normally provide. OK something has gone wrong, but this should be seen as an opportunity not a disaster. Its an opportunity to speak directly to the customer and reassure them that you care about their order and their loyalty as a consumer. For example my very first purchase from Skytrex was online and as it turned out there were issues that resulted in a delay in delivery. It eventually took close to four weeks from my miniatures to arrive, but I was OK with that because I received several emails notifying me of the problem and asking me how I would like to proceed. My needs as a customer were put first meaning I felt valued and I have happily placed several more orders with them since.

I have also encountered radically different experiences with other online retailers. Long period of utter silence; unanswered requests for information; inexplicable delays in delivery; 'customer account' pages that never get updated. I won't name names because they might just have been having a bad day, or there might have been perfectly reasonable issues I didn't know about. But as I'll never know what those issues were (because they weren't communicated to me) they have already lost my faith in them and I'll spend my money elsewhere.

I think that word faith is actually quite important here. When I buy in a shop or at a show I have the product in my grasp and all I have to do is hand over the cash. But with online purchases we relinquish our credit card details for products that we haven't even seen yet. We trust they have the stock they claim. We hope they will delivery promptly as promised. We assume that our order will be accurately met. In short we show faith that the retailer will live up to their half of the bargain. And when they don't (or when things go wrong and they don't reassure us with good communications) we feel all the more let down and disappointed as a result.

Jolly Good Service

The Flames of War 3rd Edition Rulebook in Hardback was released on the 10th March and I was hoping to pick up a copy at the Skirmish show on the Sunday. I knew that my FLGS would be in attendance and that they usually bring plenty of stock to these events. Unfortunately they hadn't had their copies in so I decided to visit the shop a week later after their next delivery. But when I called in they still hadn't had the delivery and couldn't confirm when they would get it. They were apologetic but frankly didn't seem all that worried, perhaps because they still had several copies of the 2nd edition rules on sale!

This is the point my willpower broke down and I hit the Internet instead. I found several retailers selling copies online but in the end opted for one I have used several times before, Empire Game Store. Although they are based in Kings Lynn (over 100 miles from where I live) they are fast becoming my FLGS.

I placed my order about midday yesterday and less than 24hrs later I have the rulebooks in my hands. Now that's amazing service in anyone's book, and I didn't even have to pay for delivery! So this is a big shout out to Matt at Empire Games to say cheers and thanks for the truly amazing service!

Worldwide Game Day

Today is Worldwide Game Day organised by Wizards of the Coast. This is a recurring event aimed at "Celebrating the Dungeons & Dragons Game". What this actually means is it's a worldwide promotion of the release of the Players Handbook 3 which was released last tuesday (March 16th).

The PHB 3 introduces Phsionic Powers into 4th Edition and includes six new classes including; Ardent (psionic leader); Battlemind (psionic defender); Monk (psionic striker); Psion (psionic controller); Runepriest (divine leader); and Seeker (primal controller). There are also four new races; Wilden; Minotaur; Shardminds; and Githzerai. There is an excellent review of the PHB 3 on the site Critical-Hits.com.

For more details about events in your area contact your local game storeor use the WoTC Store/event locator.

My frugal year

I'm trying to save a bit of money this year and that means being a bit restrained with my gaming purchases for a while. I'm taking my inspiration from the excellent blog A Year of Frugal Gaming. The problem is the more I try to reduce my list of wants the longer it gets. So I'm going back to basics and trying to adopt a wartime attitude of make-do-and-mend.

1) Paint the models I already have. Like most gamers I have loads of unpainted lead. If I'm honest there's little I really need to buy that I haven't already got. If I do decide to buy something new It must have a specific purpose (rather than "Ooooo Must Have!!!").

2) Sort out my modeling box to see what I have. I thought I'd run out of Superglue the other day and was about to pop out and get some more when I found five (!) unopened tubes in the bottom of my toolbox. This does raise the question - why did I buy them in the first place... what can anyone want with five tubes of superglue at one time? (Please keep your answers clean).

3) Borrow other gamers stuff. Why buy a new game when you can borrow a mates copy, scuff the corners of the box, crease the spine of the rulebook and then give it back? Seriously though, when you are part of a group of gamers it makes sense to buy widely and share rather then purchase multiple copies of games that will get played only once.

4) Dig out some old games. Some of the best nights gaming my group has had in the last 12 months have been when we got an old game out and revisited our roots. As well as being a cheep night in its also a chance to remind yourself why you started gaming in the first place.

5) Buy smart. I always go to conventions and trade shows with a shopping list. The problem is that list often includes items that are purely 'treat items' and will probably never get played with. I'm all in favor of the occasional impulse buy but if your trying to save money you have to reign it in. Make a shopping list before you go to a show but keep focused on what you need, not what you want.

6) Buy Second Hand. You can get some great bargains on bring-and-buy stalls at conventions. The downside is it can be a bit of a scrum trying to get to the front, but now and again you can find some excellent stuff on sale. Obviously your limited to what is on sale and its hard to plan ahead for the B&B but be prepared to pounce on that bargain when you see it. Its also worth revisiting the Bring & Buy several times as stock is constantly replenished at the larger shows.

7) Sell some stuff. Another excellent place to buy second hand stuff is Ebay. So long as you don't let yourself get carried away and get into a bidding war with someone else you can pick stuff up very cheep. However the real beauty of Ebay is the ease with which you can sell old books, games and models. Any money you raise can refill the piggy bank for that special purchase.

8) Shop Around. I'm a big fan of the Friendly Local gaming Store (FLGS) but sometimes you just can't beat the Internet on price. These days there are so many retailers, large and small, out there that your bound to save some money by looking around. The thing to watch is Postage costs, as this is usually the deal breaker if your looking for the best price available.

9) Do commissions. This might not be to everyones taste or ability but if you can, try getting someone to pay you to paint. Try to agree a price before you start so everyone knows what to expect. This might end up being a nice little earner, or it might just be a little sideline that adds a few quid to the pot.

10) Play more. Next time you feel the urge to go online and buy something to cheer yourself up, STOP! Go get a game out and play instead. Make it your mission to get your moneys worth out of every game your own.

I'm sure they are loads more ideas out there for saving money and still enjoying your hobby. Me, I'm saving money for my trip to Tankfest in June and a new camera latter in the year. I can have both if focus my spending instead of frittering away my meagre resources.

Clacton Hobby Store

Today's post is one of an occasional series on Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS). Clacton Art Craft & Model Centre definitely deserves its place in this series and is a store I try and visit whenever I have occasion to go to Clacton. This is a family run business run by Carol Paterson since its establishment in 1982. It is situated in the heart of the town's shopping district, right opposite a very convenient car park.

The store serves both the art and hobby communities in this very well stocked shop. The inside is what I call delightfully crowded and characterful. After I left the store I scribbled a few words in my notebook including the phrase "Aladdin's Cave". When I got home and looked up the shops website I was pleasantly amused to see those same words. Stepping inside this shop really does feel like your entering a magical world. There are so many products on display that I could easily loose myself in places like this for hours.

Aside from a wide range of 'craft' products for Card-making, stencilling, calligraphy etc. there is also a wide range of Game/Hobby products for the wargamer or miniatures painter. There is a well stock selection of fine watercolour and acrylics brushes by makes like Winsor & Newton and Daler Rowney. They also stock an impressive range of acrylic and oil base paints suitable for the artist or miniatures painter alike, including a full range of Humbrol and Citadel Paints.

Hornby products are well represented in this shop as are a wide selection of building materials that will be familiar to the model railway or wargames enthusiast alike. Also available are a selection of Airfix and Revell plastic kits.

The store also stocks a selection of Games Workshop miniatures for the Lord of the Rings games and for 40K. In addition they also stock the pre painted D&D and Star Wars Miniatures. Last but not least they have a selection of CCG's including Magic the Gathering, World of Warcraft and Dark Millennium.

This is really is a fun and interesting shop to visit and they have taken obvious care to stock as wide a selection of products as possible without loosing quality or sacrificing product knowledge. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable and I have never felt uncomfortable taking my time to browse their wares before making a purchase. If you have an excuse to visit Clacton then I recommend a slight detour (some might call it a side-quest) to visit this store.

Your Friendly Local Gaming Store

I'm a big fan of Internet shopping but there are times when you need the hands on experience that only a real shop can provide. The problem is that most high streets are full of the same old shops following the same old formula and that leaves little space for independent games retailers. Those that do exist definitely need our support, especially in these tight economic times.

I have noticed that many Gamer Bloggers have taken time to promote their Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS) and decided it was time I did the same. So this is the first of a semi regular slot to promote stores that I have discovered and enjoyed in the course of my travels. I always make it a personal goal to visit local games stores when I'm on holiday and I'm always seeking out new stores close to where I live in Dagenham. Unfortunately I've had to define 'close' as anywhere within an hours travel of my home.

Many shops have come and gone over the years but Orcs Nest in London has remained in business and independent since its establishment in 1987. I think Games Workshop made an play for them back in the 90's when they were gobbling up lots of independent stores. Fortunately they failed and the Nest has gone from strength to strength ever since. Orcs Nest also carries a very wide range of Roleplaying games, boardgames and CCG's. They also sell a full range of collectible miniatures, a wide selection of Reaper miniatures and their own range of models launched a few years ago. In addition that have pretty much every accessory you might ever want or can think of. I make a trip into London at least twice a year specifically to visit the Nest but also take advantage of any trip into London on business to drop in and get a fix.

You can find more great FLGS's at the Matthew Gray's Game Store Database or there's a Gamer and Store Finder on the Steve Jackson website. Wizards of the Coast (makers of D&D) also have a Store Finder on their site, as do Games Workshop.

Owlbear

Once again I have dug into the vault to find a model that I painted many years ago. This is a Reaper Miniatures Owlbear sculpted by Jason Wiebe. that I bought from Orcs Nest. The Owlbear is a magical beast in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. These fierce creatures attack on sight and always fight to the death - usually their own when they encounter a group of adventurers.

This was a model painted specifically as a game piece and when I painted it (probably five or six years ago) I was quite happy with the end result. But looking back I can see lots of ways to improve the model. Using a wash would have helped bring the model together for instance. Also I usually finish with a Matt varnish on my display models, but in this case I used a gloss varnish for toughness. I also experimented with a sculpted rather than dressed base. This was fine for a model expected to have a lot of handling but isn't as good to look at.